Sir Arthur Clarke and the

Jerome Pearson President, Star Technology and Research, Inc. [email protected]

ISEC Space Elevator Conference Seattle, Washington 23-25 August 2013

1 Sir Arthur C. Clarke 16 Dec 1917-19 March 2008

 Royal Air Force radio and comm, 1945  British Interplanetary Society, 1946  Science and writer  Sri Lanka and diving business, 1956  Comsats and Clarke fame, 1963  Space elevator research, 1976-79  Space elevator novels, 1978, 1997  Knighted, 1998  “Sage of Science Fiction,” 2000

2 Clarke and My Teenage Inspirations

The “big three” of science fiction: Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke (plus Bradbury)

3 3 Arthur Began it in 1945

1945 2013

Arthur Clarke, “Extra-terrestrial Relays,” Wireless World

1963

416 active in Clarke Orbit

Syncom 2 4 Arthur Inspired Me on the Orbital Tower

 1969 description of GEOSats on “imaginary towers”  1975, “The Orbital Tower” in Acta Astronautica  1976, Arthur begins our correspondence  1978, “The Fountains of Paradise”

The Orbital Tower

Arthur in 1964

5 The U.S. Bicentennial IAC, 1976

 Great conference, and my first presentation on the Orbital Tower  Met Robert Forward, Georg von Tiesenhausen (who suggested looking at the , since the elevator was so hard)

 Received Arthur’s letter, article, and questions on the space elevator

6 Clarke’s First Letter to Me, 1976

 His paper addressed the collision problem  He expected 104-106 objects  Space Command now tracking 21,000  He wondered how to propel high-speed climbers  Suggested power conducted through the tower, or radiation from solar power satellites  He asked where to locate the base for stability  He recognized the low geopotential point at 75° east longitude  I replied, suggesting a horizontal base in Mexico, at the other stable point of 105° west  Orbital pipelines and radiation belt absorption 7 Walter Morgan and Tower Stability

 Arthur asked Comsat Corporation for analysis  Walter Morgan and colleague analyzed it  Discovered the 24-hour north-south oscillation

8 Clarke’s Space Elevator Research

 Arthur discovered Yuri’s Pravda article, but didn’t meet Yuri until 1982 (seen here)  Collar and Flower  Arthur discovered their near-invention  I found US authors who did the same  Hans Moravec  Discovered his marvelous “rolling ”  I found Paul Birch’s “orbital rings,” Keith Lofstrom’s “,” and Rod Hyde’s “”

9 The Fountains of Paradise, 1978

10 Arthur’s Space Elevator Base

11 11 Buckminster Fuller and FOP Album

 Arthur did LP album of Fountains of Paradise  Caedmon recording, with a cover by Bucky Fuller shown here

 Fuller designed a free-floating tensegrity ring-bridge in space above Earth’s equator, rotating at its own rate, allowing traffic to ascend and descend

12 First Chance to Meet Arthur

 Arthur gave plenary address at the 1979 IAC in Munich, Germany

 My asteroid retrieval paper was late

 Missed my first chance to meet Arthur in person

13 Lunar Space Elevator, 1979

Climbs with solar power by day, beamed power by night

Climbing wheels Cargo Solar Arrays tanks

• Tramway from polar ice deposits to the lunar space elevator • Climbs lunar space elevator to beyond L1 • Flies as to Earth orbit using ion • Returns from Earth orbit with Lunar Tramway supplies, again using ion propulsion 14 Space Flight Without Rockets

15 Reagan’s SDI, Clarke and Heinlein

 President Reagan’s SDI advisory group met at Barney Oliver’s “Star Wars” party in 1984  Heinlein, Dan Graham, Lowell Wood, Hans Mark, Arthur Clarke, and others attended w/John Paul II, 1984  Clarke strongly objected to Heinlein’s support  Berlin Wall fell, 1989  Soviet Union “Evil Empire” collapsed, 1991  Clarke and Heinlein never reconciled, as Arthur retold the story to me at our meeting in 1996

16 Second Chance to Meet Arthur

 Sputnik 30th anniversary celebration, Moscow, 1987  Arthur was invited, but declined because of work  I was invited, and offered free flight and hotel

 As an Air Force employee, I sought permission  The request went all the way to the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger  Weinberger thought that it might be anti-SDI, and said that no DoD employees could attend  Bottom line: in the military, it is better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission!

17 The “Space Elevator Boys” Finally Meet

Sri Lanka, 1988 Singapore, 1996 IAC Bangalore IAC Beijing

Jerome Pearson and Sir Arthur Clarke 18 The Search for Strong Materials

 Arthur followed research  Richard Smalley breakthroughs, Rice University  Boris Yakobson proudly called me

19 Implications of Strong Materials

 From The Fountains of Paradise:  Morgan uses fiber in handheld climber Mentions cutting trees with the fiber  From my orbital tower research:  SE material enables Single Stage To Orbit  SSTO would compete with space elevator

20 Space Elevators and Orbital Rings

 Arthur’s 3001: The Final Odyssey  4 orbital towers 90° apart around the equator  A geostationary ring of attached satellites  He realized that a rigid ring like the one in Larry Niven’s Ringworld would be unstable

 I mentioned orbital rings in a letter to Arthur  Paul Birch’s “orbital rings and Jacob’s ladders”  Arnold and Kingsbury’s electrodynamic tube accelerator in orbit to catch payloads from Earth

21 Arthur Clarke and Extraterrestrials

 Arthur’s Fountains of Paradise has “Starglider,” an alien robotic craft going from star to star, that passes our sun while the orbital tower is being built, and communicates with Earth  His has a similar theme  But recent exo-planet discoveries raise questions

200 billion planets In our galaxy, Many of them billions of years older than Earth, You are here; And No One Has Called! 200 billion stars In our galaxy

22 Fermi’s Paradox: Where Is ET?

 The Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have found nearly 2000 planets  Most stars seem to have planets  Earth is just half the age of the galaxy  Aliens could colonize the galaxy in just a billion years at reasonable speeds

 So Enrico Fermi asked, “Where are they?”  He had 3 answers: 1. They exist, they’re here, and we’re in a zoo; 2. Civilizations destroy themselves or lose interest in space; or 3. Extraterrestrials don’t exist, and this galaxy is ours!

23 Accolades for Arthur

 Von Karman Award, 1996

 Many Sci-Fi Awards  Hugo  Nebula

 Asteroid 4923 named “Clarke”  There is an asteroid “Asimov,” Circa 1996 but “Heinlein” was taken

 “Sage of Science Fiction” Award, 2000

 Knighthood conferred by Queen Elizabeth, 1998

24 Arthur Clarke, Selected Works

Non-Fiction:  “Electromagnetic Launching as a Major Contributor to Space-Flight,” JBIS, November 1940  “Extra-Terrestrial Relays,” Wireless World, October 1945  Interplanetary Flight, 1950; The Exploration of Space, 1952  “The Space Elevator: ‘Thought Experiment’, or Key to the Universe?” Plenary Address to the 30th IAC, Munich, 1979 1950’s Fiction:  Childhood’s End, 1950; The Sands of Mars, 1951  Expedition to Earth, 1953; The City and the Stars, 1956  2001: A , motion picture with Stanley Kubrick, 1968  The Fountains of Paradise, 1978  2010: Odyssey Two, 1982  3001: The Final Odyssey, 1997 1960’s 25 Space Elevators in Fiction

“Prominence,” Curtis Brubaker

26 Summary of Arthur’s Impacts

 Arthur was a giant in the science fiction world  Many influential novels and awards

 Arthur was also influential in With Nalaka Gunawardene, the technical world of comsats Feb 2007 and Clarke Orbit  Arthur was a tireless force in developing and publicizing the space elevator  We lost one of our guiding lights with his death in 2008 Still working, Dec 2007 27